#i want to see elayne and avi date as much as anyone but NOT at the expense of erasing rand's poly nature (or theirs)

[markantonys]

the single best thing the show could do for the polycule is a very simple change: make it happen on purpose. make all four members work together from the beginning to set up a poly relationship intentionally, rather than stumbling into one due to a mix of miscommunication and Fate Said So.

in the books, rand thinks he's having a series of unconnected romantic encounters with three different women and has no idea a polycule is developing until the women come to him to propose the final product. it is documented that the reason rj wrote it this way is because it's inspired by a similar situation he was once in, so i can't exactly blame him for writing based off personal experience, but it does cause several problems in the story.

Problems:

a) rand has little to no input on his own relationship(s) and spends the whole series being extremely passive in his love life. this makes him come across as at best a victim to the whims of his partners who is not allowed to express what HE wants out of the relationship, and at worst an asshole who doesn't really care about any of them as people and doesn't care what arrangements the three of them work out so long as he gets to fuck SOMEONE. it also means that the romances don't have as much of an emotional impact on him/his character development as they should (and as they do on the women) because he's just kinda floating along going "oh whatever you guys want, makes no difference to me."

b) elayne and aviendha get a bad fandom rap as being bad partners to rand because they confuse him on purpose and play games with him. like most of elayne's (in particular) bad fandom raps, this is an unfair exaggeration, but it's rooted in the fact that rj wanted rand to wind up in a polycule by accident rather than helping arrange a polycule on purpose, which means that rand has to hook up with 3 different women in a row without realizing that a polycule is brewing, without having discussed the idea of additional partner(s) with his prior partner(s) and gotten their permission to hook up with other people, AND without coming across as a cheater. which means that rand has to believe himself sufficiently broken up with the prior woman before he can hook up with the next one, which means that elayne has to send him conflicting letters so that he can get away with hooking up with aviendha and aviendha has to freeze him out so that he can get away with hooking up with min.

("they're just greedy/indecisive/cheaters" is probably the biggest harmful stereotype against poly people, and the above approach from the books flirts with that far too much, so the show definitely needs to change that. the majority of people have a very very difficult time understanding polyamory (just look at tumblr, where even the ~wokest~ WOT fans are saying the polycule should be split up into 2 monogamous pairings bc they think the poly aspect is "weird" and they insist that elayne Actually loves aviendha the most or rand Actually loves min the most and that they can't possibly REALLY mean it when they say they love multiple people equally), which is why it's especially important that the show portray it in a way where it's abundantly clear that it's not cheating or rand being greedy/indecisive/stringing a bunch of women along.)

c) the problem for the other 3's approach to the polycule is miscommunication. the problem for min's is Fate Said So. she is rammed into the polycule by prophecy rather than by spending enough time with the other parties to come to want it on her own, and so she coasts along on "you have to let me join your relationship because it's fated to happen no matter what" rather than needing to put in the same work elayne and aviendha do of bonding with each other, making an effort to learn about aiel polyamory practices (in elayne's case), and growing to genuinely want to share their partner with each other and to genuinely enjoy seeing the other happy with him.

the result is min feeling out of place in the relationship: elayne constantly thinks about how she loves rand and aviendha equally, then sometimes hastily adds min as an afterthought; aviendha is very firm that she can't share rand with elayne until they're first-sisters, but shrugs and makes an exception for min for no reason (but then proceeds to think how she wishes she didn't have to share her partner with a near-stranger); min barely cares about the other two and frequently thinks how she wishes she could just have rand to herself and it's unfair that she has to share him. it's a very glaring contrast how elayne and aviendha come to feel genuine joy and compersion at rand's love for the other, while the most positive thought min ever has is "if i HAVE to share (which i'd rather not), then elayne isn't the worst option for a co-partner."

on this last point, monogamous people forcing themselves to try out polyamory for their poly partner's sake (which is absolutely how book!min comes across) is something that happens and gets people hurt irl, and contributes to the societal misconception that polyamory never works out long term and that a choice will inevitably have to be made (again, see tumblr deciding that the endgame will have to be elayne & aviendha happily monogamous in caemlyn and reddit that it will have to be rand & min happily monogamous traveling the world). so if the show is going to portray polyamory, imo it has a responsibility to show that it is a viable long-term relationship type that people can be genuinely happy in. thus, all 4 parties need to choose this type of relationship because they want it, not because fate said they had to, and especially min since she's the one who is the most explicitly in the "only doing this bc fate" camp in the books (whereas rand, elayne, and aviendha all come across as genuinely polyamorous people who likely would have settled on this arrangement even without prophecy foreknowledge).

Solutions:

i made a post recently-ish with a hypothetical timeline for 8 seasons of the show, so if i make any unexplained assumptions in this section about what seasons various characters will be spending time together during, that's where they came from.

i feel pretty confident that rand/aviendha will be the first romance we see in the show, since he's still getting over his much-more-serious-than-the-book-version relationship with egwene and it would make sense to give him season 2 to finish that up and to hold off on new romance for him until season 3. i'm predicting he and aviendha will also meet elayne at falme in 2x08, but i also expect the characters will set off on their TSR roadtrips by the end of 3x01 at the latest, which gives rand and elayne no more than 1-2 episodes together - enough to establish Crush Vibes, but not enough to actually have anything happen between them. so, the show will go out of order and start with rand/aviendha.

which is a perfect way of changing the polycule from accidental to intentional! having rand's first romance be with the partner who is from a poly-aware culture means that the entire set of relationships is now being built off a poly-aware base. from the get-go, aviendha can explain the concept of polyamory to rand and make it clear to him that she is comfortable with that sort of relationship, which means that they can get together and stay together rather than needing to backslide so that rand has an excuse to go off and fuck other people. he doesn't need excuses if he instead has permission! also, rand/elayne not having happened yet would mean aviendha has no reason to feel guilty and pull away from rand after sleeping with him.

so, rand and aviendha are solidly together and poly-curious by the time they reunite with elayne in s4. aviendha can see that rand and elayne like each other, so she encourages them to get together, and rand/elayne can indeed get together without rand/aviendha needing to be tanked first since rand and aviendha are both on the same pro-poly page. elayne knows a little about polyamory from meeting bain and chiad at falme (and maybe from meeting alanna or other greens at the tower), and she has feelings for rand but also likes aviendha and doesn't want to interfere with their relationship, so she is happy to agree to the arrangement. but she still has plenty to learn about aiel ways and about aviendha, and aviendha wants to become first-sisters as is proper, so even without aviendha having toh to elayne for banging rand, the two of them still have a reason to want to bond and grow closer (and for the show, this arc will result in them falling in love instead of or in addition to becoming first-sisters).

so we've fixed the narrative relying on miscommunication to get rand, elayne, and aviendha into the polycule. now to fix the reliance on Fate Said So for min. we can safely say that she's already had her 3-women viewing judging by that line in s1, so she already knows the polycule is fated. this in itself is fine - wrestling with knowing you're fated to love someone is an interesting character arc if done well and done sparingly [sideeyes rj on both counts]. what needs to be changed is how min USES this foreknowledge.

don't have her share it with elayne, aviendha, or rand until after the four of them have gotten together naturally. have her discuss the viewing with her aunts in s2 (or, hell, even with mat, could be a good way to contribute to the friendship they're supposed to have at the end of the series) instead of with elayne, and have her say she knows who 2/3 of the other people are but would never want to tell them about this viewing because it sucks to know you're fated to love someone before it's happened and she'd hate to burden anyone else with that knowledge. have her keep the viewing to herself because she wants rand and elayne (and aviendha, tho min doesn't yet know who she is) to have the freedom to fall in love by choice, even though she herself can't have that freedom. (shit, now that i write it out i actually LOVE the idea of mat being the one she's having this convo with since he too will soon be struggling with a Fated Romance.)

in the books, by telling elayne soon after meeting her that she'll have to share her boyfriend with 2 others and then in salidar going "one of them is me btw so you'd better give me permission to fuck your boyfriend when i see him soon," it feels like min is using her viewing to bully elayne (and later aviendha) into letting her join the relationship. min telling rand in eotw that he shouldn't bother with egwene because they won't end up together also contributes to this vibe, and the show has thankfully already cut out that moment, so i have high hopes that they're attempting to make min more..........empathetic, i guess, in terms of how she uses her viewings. book!min is understandably afraid of being left out in the cold since she doesn't know which if any of them rand will love back, so she uses her viewings to prime the other parties to be willing to Let Her In when the time comes, basically, but it's still kind of a shitty thing to do. however, so far, due to being older and much more mature and much more reluctant to share viewings, show!min gives me the vibes that she would rather quietly resign herself to unrequited love than have to burden other people with the knowledge that their love is Foretold (particularly once she comes to view elayne as a friend in s2).

so, if min doesn't share the viewing with elayne and aviendha in advance, then she will have to join the relationship naturally, by spending time with and getting to know all 3 parties, rather than by telling them they have to let her in because Fate Said So. i see space for all 4 of them to be in the same place together during season 4, while avirandlayne is brewing but min is still just a friend, so that would be a great time for min to bond with them all prior to getting with rand (and maybe as a result, rand develops a crush on her and confesses it to elayne and aviendha, who are happy to give him permission because they already know and like min; alternately, rand has an obvious crush on min but is totally oblivious about it, so elayne and aviendha tease him like "if there is...............anyone else you're interested in.............maybe a certain bartender............you can totally go for it" and rand is adorably baffled as to why they believe he has a crush on min, and then in season 5 he finally Realizes).

and like, wouldn't it be so cute if after the four of them are in a committed polycule, min finally says "hey, i actually had a viewing ages ago that this would happen, but i didn't want to tell you guys and make you feel pressured to love each other" and they all have a good laugh about it together? that would be SO cute!

so, overall, the seeds of a wonderful polycule are there in the books, and the show doesn't have to make a TON of tweaks to help it live up to its best potential! i'm really excited to see what they do with it because it's such a unique romance storyline and one of my favorite aspects of the series, it just needs the Updating For 2020s touch (and the Updating To Reflect The Way Real Human Adults Behave And Communicate With Each Other touch) that the show has so far excelled at applying.

[markantonys]

WOT sims shenanigans: polycule wedding edition

mat flirted with faile at his own engagement party 💀 he is OUT of control! list of people sim mat has flirted with so far: rand, elayne, aviendha, faile, egwene, nynaeve. thankfully, it was only the one flirt and not enough to develop a romance bar between them. and also i’d disabled jealousy game-wide in order to minimize issues with the polycule, so mat didn’t get murdered by perrin djfkgj

the engagement party’s dresscode was Party Outfit, and for most sims i make their Party Outfit just a regular-looking outfit but certain fancy sims i will give a fancy Party Outfit. so the result here was that everybody showed up in normal clothes except for elayne who was in a freaking ballgown. canon.

aviendha dipping rand is something that can be so personal:

gawyn shows up at the polycule’s apartment almost every single day asking if anyone wants to workout with him, so one day i finally had rand and elayne take him to the gym (mat and avi were at work) but then the two of them ended up fucking in the shower at the gym and ignoring gawyn. poor gawyn.

lan was not invited to elayne and aviendha’s bachelorette party but showed up anyway to hang out with nynaeve, bless that wifeguy

nynaeve repaid this devotion by CALLING MAT ON LOVE DAY TO ASK HIM ON A DATE god i am spraying sim mat with a water bottle! he’s out of control!!!! (i had him say no to the date ofc, don’t worry)

elayne tried to flirt with moiraine because i hadn’t bothered setting them as aunt and niece jdkjfg thankfully i caught her in time to prevent it. the problem is that very often when a sim sees their significant other they get in a flirty mood, and since i have 4 sims who are dating each other all living in an apartment together they’re pretty much CONSTANTLY horny because they love each other so much, except then they will just hit on any other sim nearby rather than only the partners who inspired that horniness (and elayne and mat are the worst of the bunch bc they both have the Romantic trait which also often puts them in flirty moods). at their core sims are slutty bisexual messes and i love it.

last year on Love Day, rand gave mat a flower and mat hated it. this year mat gave rand a flower and rand hated it! how the turn tables. rand has been waiting all year for his vengeance.

and finally we come to the wedding! here’s everybody’s outfits. yes i’m still crying over rand in his little flower jacket 🥺

the wedding went surprisingly smoothly! the guests all showed up and watched at least the first few ceremonies, though by the end of it most had wandered off. the only hitch was that it took the literal entire 8ish-hour wedding event just to get through the 5 different ceremonies, so in the last pics with the cake cutting, the wedding had actually ended by that point and i was holding the guests hostage at the venue djfkjg

first, some pre-ceremony selfies because i foresaw it would be dark out by the time the ceremonies were over (but even so it was kinda cloudy):

next, everybody being walked down the aisle by their sim of honor! nynaeve for rand, perrin for mat, gawyn for elayne (don’t ask me why i made their hair different colors, elayne was originally blonde but then i found a good cc red-gold hair whose base color is red so now she’s a redhead but gawyn’s still blond) and egwene for aviendha. can you tell that dark red is my go-to sims formalwear color lmao

and finally the ceremonies! moiraine officiated some of them but then wandered off for others, and alas i didn’t get a screenshot of rand and mat’s kiss because it happened too fast, so instead here they are being dorks while exchanging vows:

not pictured: gawyn doing pushups and lan situps during avilayne’s ceremony

you can’t see her here but moiraine had returned to officiate matlayne’s ceremony! and then left again. actually now that i think about it i believe mat was the one i had ask moiraine to officiate, so maybe the game only registered her as the officiant for ceremonies that mat was involved in.

rand and aviendha’s was last and the only guests who were still sitting and watching by that point were egwene, gawyn, and siuan. absolute troopers, gold stars for them.

i had rand and elayne do the cake cutting because i figured they’re the saps who would most want to :’)

in conclusion, you know the part in princess diaries 2 when the choir conductor has to conduct really fast to match the pace mia is setting down the aisle and then collapses against her music stand once it’s over? that was me when i finished this wedding.

[markantonys]

acos chapters 30-end: ebou dar crew

“elayne had not been so glad to see anyone since...since mat cauthon appeared in the stone of tear. a horrendous thought.” I SCREAMED AT THIS matlayne rights!!!! elayne and mat have the hugest crushes on each other and are so mad about it! this is an enemies to lovers goldmine, and it was wasted! if rj had been more open to the idea of men sharing a woman instead of only women sharing a man (we do see myrelle and sort of sevanna having multiple men but both of those are framed as Bad And Scandalous), i truly believe mat and rand might have both dated elayne. the chemistry is there, and i swear they think about each other differently than, for example, mat and nynaeve think about each other (mat’s constantly thinking about elayne’s sun hair and dimples and how pretty she is, and elayne is doing a lot more internal acknowledging of mat being Maybe Okay Actually than nynaeve has in this book). and especially when you consider **future book spoiler i’m not supposed to know yet but do** that mat literally does end up in an “oh no i hate nobles but i’m falling for one” romance that, in my opinion which is based on my vague spoiler knowledge since i haven’t actually read a word of that romance yet, is just a walmart version of the gucci that is matlayne. we could’ve had it all dammit!!

also, i 100% adore randlayne, but i’m hollering extra about the fact that elayne was also reunited with rand and made out with him a bunch of times since mat appeared at the stone, but does not count THAT as the gladdest she’s ever been to see someone jkfjgh (i know this line is just in the context of being rescued from a tense situation but let me have this)

elayne asserting her dominance with the other aes sedai in ebou dar!! i say that’s my baby queen and i’m really proud!!

when the aes sedai are now looking to elayne to make decisions: “all she had wanted was for them to admit she really was aes sedai. she fought a momentary urge to protest that she was too young, too inexperienced.” these characters are all just babies having to save the world :(((

i forgot to mention in a previous chapter but my heart burst over aviendha taking off rand’s bracelet and refusing to wear it until elayne had one too, and now nynaeve recalls asking aviendha to borrow the bracelet: “aviendha had snatched it to her bosom as if it was her most precious possession, and of all things, elayne began comforting her. nynaeve would not have been surprised to see the pair fall weeping on one another’s shoulders.” MY HEART!!!! elayne/avi/rand triad is literally so good and sensible and natural, we don’t need romantic min/rand at all, that relationship is seriously starting to feel extraneous

“there was something odd going on there, and if she had not known those two were too sensible for such nonsense, she would have suspected a man at the root of it.” Bi And Poly Behavior Baffles Local Monogamous Heterosexual

nynaeve gets unblocked!!!!!!!! i’m so proud of her!!!!

lanaeve reunion!! in the form of lan rescuing nynaeve from drowning and her immediately puking her guts out right at his feet. i love them so much.

ok i have to take that back because nynaeve just slapped and punched lan a bunch of times after finding out myrelle got his bond 🙄 once again i am asking for wot women to stop beating up their boyfriends, good god!

but once lan explains and nynaeve realizes how dead inside he looks, she becomes more understanding, thankfully. “with an effort, she moderated her tone; he was ill, and harsh words never helped sickness.” mental illness being acknowledged by a character who isn’t experiencing it personally, in MY wheel of time? it’s more likely than you think! woohoo!

awww nynaeve makes lan laugh for the first time since moiraine “died” ❤️❤️ “you will be my warder, and my husband, for a very long time. i will not let you die. do you understand that? i can be as stubborn as i have to be.” nynaeve really said i’m gonna fight god and win for this man 😤❤️ tho i do feel that this is all pretty rushed and that lan is not in a good mental or emotional place to commit to a marriage right now, but whatever, i learned long ago that i have to try my best to suspend disbelief when it comes to wot romances. and i suppose that in a world approaching the last battle, there’s no point waiting for “the right time” to marry someone you love.

i already made a post about this when i first read it but i have to discuss it here too: one of the kin mistook mat for elayne’s warder and i screamed!!!! this is literally so mean!!!! at this point we have had 1) mat’s thoughts about how hard it is to keep elayne out of trouble getting interrupted by someone asking if he’s ever thought about becoming a warder, 2) mat in salidar receiving multiple offers to become someone’s warder, 3) mat spending an entire book and a half fretting about elayne’s safety (actually two and a half counting the old days of tdr), and now 4) mat straight up being mistaken for elayne’s warder. WHAT is the POINT!! why would you do this to me! what’s this all been about! add “mat as elayne’s warder” to “elayne/avi/rand triad” and “mat and rand both dating elayne” on the list of “things that are literally so obvious and perfect yet inexplicably do not happen”

leaving the palace, mat is jumpy and afraid that tylin might spring out at him from anywhere. he mentions that she had half a dozen servants seize him in the hall the night before and drag him to her rooms and also that she used his scarf to tie his hands up “before he knew what she was doing,” says that she treats him like a toy and that she makes him feel helpless and has him “ready to jump out of his skin,” feels “strangled” and “frantic” at the thought of staying half a week longer in ebou dar, thinks that he would rather face MOGHEDIEN than tylin, and again feels like he’s about to cry. not much to say about this that i didn’t say in the post about the last chunk of chapters, but my heart is breaking :((( “against tylin, he had no more [protection] than he did against the daughter of the bloody nine moons, whoever she was” fuck this, i am picking mat up and gently setting him down into the polycule! THAT’S the romantic future he deserves!

in happier news, elayne is dressed ridiculously fancy to for a trip to the seedy part of town in which they’re hoping not to attract attention, and i love her very much. mat says that the embroidery on her dress is “thickly emphasizing the oval that exposed half her bosom” he is shook by The Titties, as aviendha was in a previous chapter. he proceeds to say that elayne has a pretty face and to mention AGAIN her dimple which he claims she always expects to work as a method of persuasion. mat is literally the uno meme “stop thinking about elayne’s dimple or draw 25″

“one thing he had to give her; she was too smart to go on with what obviously would not work” all i got out of this is that mat thinks elayne is smart 😌

mat says “i know rand’s afraid you [lan] are [dead]” mat is aware of at least one (1) of rand’s feelings! cauthor crumb!

lan and nynaeve were married by the sea folk last night! i’m crushed that it happened offscreen, i want to know about sea folk marriage customs! i love marriage customs! and weddings! and love! mat being math lady meme about lan and nynaeve being married is killing me jkfgh

mat tells elayne the truth about tylin and she laughs at him and calls it “a taste of his own medicine.” yiiiiiiiiikes. yikes!!!!! this is definitely elayne’s Worst Moment in the series so far. to her credit she does apologize a page later and offer to help him with tylin (though more because she realized “hey, mat’s being nice to me, i should be nice to him too” than because she realized “hey, rape is bad”). however, it is quite clear that the author doesn’t take mat’s situation seriously, so if the author doesn’t take it seriously, how can i expect a character to? and i’m calling ooc behavior as well, elayne “goes crazy trying to help anyone who shows the slightest sign of distress” trakand wouldn’t react like that to mat’s distress no matter how annoying she found him, that’s not her heart.

when a character does something shitty, if it’s a character i don’t like it’s their fault, but if it’s my fav it’s the author’s fault. hope that clears things up <3

but we have passed what i do believe is the worst matlayne moment of the series (i’m glad i knew about this ahead of time or i would’ve been a lot madder - at rj not elayne, of course) so we can move on to their sweet moments

mat tries to give elayne the foxhead for protection against moghedien!!! 🥺🥺😭😭🥰🥰 like, this is HUGE! we know how scared mat is of channeling even from channelers he’s friendly with, let alone from a forsaken, and how tightly he clings to the foxhead and depends on it for his safety. and yet, he decides elayne’s safety is more important to him! i have a moment in a wip fic where mat gives rand the foxhead and it’s a major gesture of love (god knows when that fic will see the light of day (it’s part 4 of my putting mat in the polycule series and part 3 isn’t even done yet) so forget you read that), so imagine my pure joy when that Actually Happened in the book with elayne!!

“she was tall for a woman, but she still had to look up at him. she might never have seen him before.” 1) every time elayne’s height is mentioned i feel like i’ve been punched in the face. she’s even worse than mat when it comes to giving off short energy. she is literally 5′2″ in my mind, what do you MEAN she’s tall? i’ll never give up my mental image of short queen elayne and short king mat + actual giants rand and aviendha. i know aviendha could pick mat up and bridal carry him, i know this for a fact (granted she probably could do that even if he WAS taller than her - which he certainly is not - because she is very strong. oh my god imagine aviendha giving mat piggyback rides!!! i have to lie down.) 2) “character A looking at character B like they’ve never seen them before” is a common wot phrase and every single time it makes me think Realizing Romantic Feelings and i go feral. i vividly remember an instance of mat looking at rand like he’d never seen him before.

“elayne reached up to pull his hat off and slip the cord over his had. she actually tucked the foxhead into his shirt and patted it before handing him his hat.” 🥰🥰🥰🥰

mat: “i made a promise too; i promised to keep the pair of you alive.” elayne: “you wear it. after all, you can hardly keep your promise if moghedien kills you.” 🥺🥺🥰🥰

elayne tells mat he must be careful! she cares about him!!!! “sometimes i forget my duty to my subjects. you are a worthy subject, matrim cauthon.” oh my god elayne just admit you have a crush on him, would you?

i realize i’m just typing out this entire scene wholesale but i’m having EMOTIONS

elayne learning new swears from mat jksjdf i love her i love them

elayne: fuck!

nynaeve: [gasps]

mat: where the fuck did she learn that?!

“she understood? she understood, and not one acid little comment, not one cutting remark? and he was her subject. her worthy subject.” why do i feel like, despite all his harping on about not respecting nobility and not considering himself a subject andor, mat went 😳 when elayne called him her worthy subject. ohohoho he secretly has a Queen Elayne kink, doesn’t he? just like rand “light help me i did want to kneel and worship her” al’thor

"sobriety. light, what a word to apply to mat cauthon! tylin must be scaring him more than he thought, if he was shriveling up this way.” hmm is THIS the intended purpose of the tylin thing? to traumatize mat into wanting a quieter, more settled life, so that he’s nice and tamed for his future wife to scoop him up? 😒 i like the greater maturity and sense of responsibility he’s starting to show, trying to keep the peace with the girls and keep his promises to them and protecting elayne from danger and feeling responsible for the band members’ safety, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of his joie de vivre :(

“mat would have [followed elayne] if nynaeve and lan had not been in his way...he deserved to be there, at least, when this fabulous bloody bowl was uncovered.” we both know that the real reason is that you want to keep close to elayne. because you’re her warder. or SHOULD HAVE BEEN IF THERE WAS ANY JUSTICE IN THE WORLD i will literally never get over this.

mat trying to get to the stairs while nynaeve and lan are arguing is the “can i please get a waffle” vine

and now, we reach it. the best matlayne scene of all time, the highlight of the entire book, and one of my favorite scenes in the whole series to date!

“his eyes went from janira’s crumpled corpse to elayne. he had promised to keep her safe for rand. he had promised. with a cry, he launched himself at the killer, ashandarei extended.” i screamed enough over this on first read, but then on the next page mat mentions something about avenging elayne and i realized: he thinks she’s dead right now. he comes into the room, sees “dead” elayne and the guy who killed her, thinks it’s too late to do anything to help her, yet, rather than turning and running to save himself since there’s nothing actually helpful he can do here, he stays to fight the killer PURELY to avenge her. because he promised rand he would keep her safe and thinks that she died on his watch. i am not okay!!!!

and of COURSE i have to scream about the matrandlayne-ness of it all!!! even if the 3 of them are never in a scene all together at any point in the series (but maybe they will be? maybe??? i’m not holding my breath tho) we’ll always have “he had promised to keep her safe for rand.” if you showed me that line and erased all my memories of this book and of every matrandlayne fic i’ve read or written and asked me if i thought that line came from canon or from a fic, i 100% would’ve thought it was the fic. AAAHHH it’s just so much!!! i want that line tattooed on my forehead!!!

“‘you can’t have her,’ he said loudly. promises. ... ‘you can’t bloody have her.’ he started forward, keeping the medallion spinning. the first step was the hardest, but he had a promise to keep.” LITERALLY THE MOST ICONIC LINE EVER so far my top 2 most romantic lines in all of wot are matlayne “you can’t bloody have her” and cauthor “i won’t leave you, i won’t leave you no matter what.” romance peaked with those two lines. and the fact that mat again has his promise to rand in mind here, it’s SO matrandlayne i can’t. i can’t!!!!! the first step was the hardest but he had a promise to keep 😤😭🥺🥰

addition bc i just noticed something else: after the fight, elayne wakes up and calls mat’s name and mat hurries to her side and tells us “there was shouting from somewhere below, but nynaeve and the rest would have to take care of themselves for the moment” elayne is his #1 priority!!!

“her eyes latched onto his, and if he had ever thought she looked at him as if he were a stranger, he saw it for true now.” 📣📣📣📣 USING THIS PHRASE AGAINST ME AGAIN!!! this would’ve been the PERFECT moment for a Big Damn Kiss™!!!

“she drew a breath that did interesting things to that oval cut-out.” even in the immediate aftermath of them both almost dying, mat is shook by The Titties. me too mat.

“‘thank you, mat. i apologize for everything i ever did or thought.’ she sounded as though she really meant it. ‘i keep building up toh toward you,’ she smiled ruefully, ‘but i am not going to let you beat me. you are going to have to let me save you at least once to balance matters.’ ‘i’ll see what i can arrange,’ he said dryly.” elayne ❤️❤️❤️ she might be stubborn, but she admits when she’s wrong (so fuck you to all the elayne haters who use her being mean to mat as a reason to hate her - she apologizes! very genuinely!). i fully support a future scenario where mat is a damsel in distress and elayne rescues him. gimme!!

“[birgitte] was the source of everything he knew about gholam...and he would not have revealed that on a hot grill.” i love their friendship SO much 🥺 such a shame that mat had so much wonderful relationship development with various people this book and was then immediately sent away from all of them for, i’m guessing, the majority of the remainder of the series

mat describes elayne’s eyes as “cool pools of deep blue water” add that to the list of “very platonic metaphors mat has for describing elayne’s appearance.” like, can you IMAGINE him describing nynaeve or egwene or birgitte as having hair like the sun and eyes like cool pools of deep blue water? (well nynaeve and egwene don’t look like that but you get the point)

“were they trying to get back at him? was it just a case of ‘mat wants to be in charge so much, let him see how well he can do without us’? he might have believed it of nynaeve, any time but this anyway, but not of elayne, not anymore.” GROWTH!! and mat confirms a little later that he is now “in elayne’s good books.” this was one of the central relationships of the book, i honestly think they got more pagetime and development than lan & nynaeve and aviendha & elayne, and possibly even rand & min

and one last mention by mat of elayne’s dimple, god bless. the man is obsessed.

“elayne, though, just murmured ‘a most observant subject’ in tones of rueful amusement.” queen and subject roleplay is totally gonna become a kink thing for them, i just know it.

mat tells tylin he’s going to miss her and thinks to himself that it’s true??? what THE fuck!!!!!!!!!! i don’t want to spoil my matlayne euphoria so i am simply not going to think about this. but note my list at the beginning of this post, which are mat’s most recent feelings about tylin before this point, and observe the SUDDEN, WILD, AND UNREALISTIC change of heart.

tylin pinches mat’s ass in front of the 4 girls, to his embarrassment, and while aviendha and birgitte both laugh at him (😒), elayne has an expression of “commiseration” and nynaeve of “glowering disapproval,” and tylin says that nynaeve thinks mat is a little boy needing protection. so elayne and nynaeve did at least make an effort to intervene with her on his behalf, okay, that’s a step in the right direction!

and the reason mat gets separated from the gang for, i believe, the next several books is because olver left the palace to go wander the city and mat tells the girls to make their gateway and leave and he’ll meet them at the farm later. DAMMIT OLVER!!! friendship ended with olver! how could you do this to mat and more importantly to me! i know it’s not your fault but i’m literally so devastated at the prospect of how long it’ll be before mat sees any of the gang again. matlayne was the only thing that kept me going past the cauthor separation in the last book, but what do i have to look forward to now? at least there will likely be more avilayne next book, and they’ll reunite with rand soon (book 9 i think?), and i THINK mat sees elayne again a book or two before book 14 (which will have the cauthor reunion), so i suppose i’ve got my little crumbs, my little carrot on a stick leading me to get through each subsequent book. the great thing about wot multishipping is that if one of your ships is separated you’ll likely have another spending time together in the meantime! still, i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, the characters and their relationships with each other are the heart of this series to me and i lose more interest the more split up everyone gets.

for the show i’m instituting a ta’veren buddy system and declaring that no ta’veren should be allowed to go anywhere without being accompanied by at least one other ta’veren (this is counting egwene and nynaeve since they’re ta’veren in the show and should’ve been in the books. anon who told me after i finished book 1 that i would come to see that it’s empowering for the girls to influence stuff by choice instead of by ta’veren-ness, i do NOT see that and i still think they should’ve been ta’veren.)

nobody expects the seanchan invasion! except me because i’d been spoiled. much as i wish this wasn’t happening, it’s certainly a cinematic scene imagining mat running through the war-torn streets desperately shouting for his son. one of those moments i can perfectly see a tv adaptation of in my head. also, these whole last few pages i found myself with the seanchan section of “from the west” stuck in my head, which is how you know it’s a good Villain Theme Tune.

mat gets crushed by a falling wall, the evil foil to my beloved wall in the caemlyn garden, and that’s the last we’ll see of him until the book AFTER next book, much to my devastation.